


10 steps to falling in love with someone who wants to save you (but doesn't know how to save himself)

by bygoneboy



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Shepard Survives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 12:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7892119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoneboy/pseuds/bygoneboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Shoulda known you’d wanna stick up for him,” mutters Joker. “Stoic, heroic. He’s so your type.”</p><p>Kaidan laughs. “I don’t know about that,” he says. “I’m not big on being left behind.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	10 steps to falling in love with someone who wants to save you (but doesn't know how to save himself)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Killbarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killbarry/gifts).



> for elin xxx

 

**1**

 

“That’s him?”

 

Kaidan is watching from the pilot viewport, with Joker crowded up next to him. Below them on the landing platform, their new XO is speaking with Captain Anderson, stiff-shouldered and tense.

 

“That’s him,”Joker answers, sounding resigned. Kaidan quirks an eyebrow, glancing over at him curiously; Joker makes a face. “Come on, you read his file, Alenko.”

 

“Yeah, everyone’s read his file.”

 

“And?”

 

“I don’t know,” says Kaidan, “he sounds tough.”

 

“Tough!” Joker snorts. “This guy abandoned over half his crew to finish that last mission,  _greater good_ or whatever. And when Anderson's gone, he’s gonna be next in line? How long do you think we'd last with someone like that running things?”

 

“You worried?”

 

“To be my executive officer’s cannon fodder? Hellyeah, you bet I am.”

 

Out on the tarmac, Kaidan watches Shepard shake Anderson’s hand— then raise his head, and look up, eyes vivid blue, biotic blue, fixed on the pilot’s cabin. There’s no way he could see Kaidan staring; the glass is tinted, and thick as krogan armor.

 

That gaze cuts straight through him, all the same.

 

“Shoulda known you’d wanna stick up for him,”mutters Joker. “Stoic, heroic. He’s so your type.”

 

Kaidan laughs. “I don’t know about that,” he says. “I’m not big on being left behind.”

 

 

**2**

 

“Breathe,” says Shepard, as the shuttle rocks back and forth, Virmire’s shrapnel pinging off of the outer walls as they rise into the sky. Kaidan is lightheaded and bloody and on the floor, somehow, he doesn’t remember his knees giving out but Shepard is crouching in front of him, holding his face between the rifle-callused palms of his hands. “Come on, now,” he’s saying. “Look at me, breathe, LT, that’s an order.”

 

Kaidan tries, hysteria closing up his throat. “I told you to leave me,” he says, voice shaking. “Why did you leave her, why didn't you leave me—”

 

“It was a tough call. But we needed to get off-planet fast. You were closer to my mark.”

 

He sees it in the way Shepard’s eyes slide away from his, and fix on the nothingness over his head. “That isn't true,” he says, angry, suddenly, and more than angry, desperate,“that’s not— you're not— why are you lying to me?”

 

“I chose you,” Shepard says, looking lost, looking back at the black residue filtering into Virmire's atmosphere, looking anywhere but him. “I can’t tell you why, Kaidan. I’m sorry, I wish I— God, I wish I could.”

 

He should have pressed. He shouldn’t have let Shepard stop there; he should have pressed for it and taken what he could get, while he still had the chance.

 

That’s the first thing he thinks when the call comes in, Anderson's voice raw on the other end of the line,  _Lieutenant—_

_It's about the Commander._

 

 

**3**

 

The funeral is private. Small. No reporters, no vids. The Admiral makes sure of that. They play taps. There wasn't a body so they put an empty box in the ground, instead, and fire off a round of blanks, per standard procedure and tradition.

 

Kaidan is the only crew member to show up.

 

He believes in death, back then, and in staying dead. In paying respects and trying to say goodbye, because  _Kaidan, go, now_ doesn’t put much to rest. They fold up the flag and Anderson gives it to him, and he cries into his hands, in front of Hackett and the rest of the god-damned Alliance.

 

And maybe that’s the reason he walks away, when Shepard steps off a Cerberus shuttle two years later, when he comes back to haunt and unearth and turn over everything Kaidan had thought he’d buried with that casket. That feeling of being alone, of having someone and losing them, that ache in his chest and Shepard’s name, carved into a slab of marble.

 

It isn’t the kind of thing you forget.

 

 

**4**

 

“You know the Commander?” asks James, before it all falls apart again, when looking at Shepard means  _what-ifs_ and _could-have-beens_  and  _I miss you, who are you, the man I remember, the one I followed to hell and back—_

 

“I used to,” says Kaidan.

 

 

**5**

 

But the end of the world can get so lonely.

 

And Shepard is so familiar.

 

Stoic, heroic—

 

 _Just my type,_ thinks Kaidan, ears going hot, standing in the middle of the CIC with Shepard's hand between his shoulderblades, sweeping up to his neck. Combing through casualty reports while he runs his thumb up the line of Kaidan's spine, into his hair, over his implant, pressing there until Kaidan gasps, and shudders, and turns his smile into the soft, always-steady blood-beat of Shepard's throat.

 

And Kaidan’s texting him  _hey,_ texting him  _I’m so happy, that’s all_. Making out with him in the elevator and laughing, when Garrus walks in on them on accident.  _How can the future be so unsure and so bright at the same time?_  Kaidan looks pretty good in Shepard's hoodie.  _You look even better,_  Shepard tells him,  _with it off._

 

But yeah. Okay.

 

Some days, it still feels like they’re fighting for something they’ve already lost.

 

“I wanted you back,”says Shepard, sitting up against the headboard of the bed with Kaidan in his lap. “On Horizon, the moment I saw you— that pull-hard-to-port moment? It was like that for me, too.”

 

“Do we have to talk about it?”

 

“I thought you’d want to.”

 

“We’ve cleared the air on this one.”

 

“You believe that?” Shepard looks astonished. “A whole year, Kaidan. And then they wouldn’t even let you visit on Earth—”

 

“Three,” interrupts Kaidan, poorly-buried hurt wrenching in his gut.

 

“What?”

 

“Three years. Three years apart, not one, you  _died_ , do you not remember that?”

 

“Not really,” Shepard says, eyes crinkling at the corners. "I wasn't exactly conscious for most of it."

 

Kaidan snorts, and shoves at his shoulder; Shepard slides down without a fight, letting Kaidan straddle his hips, pull at his shirt. Always ready and eager for Kaidan’s mouth, Kaidan’s hands. So painfully aware of the time they’ve already wasted. The shots they’ve had, and never took.

 

“Watching you walk away,”Shepard says, eyes squeezing shut, breath hitching when Kaidan palms at the bulge in his briefs, between his legs. “Watching you— leave me. It was like dying all over again—”

 

Kaidan kisses him until he’s straining beneath his hands, until his fingers are fixing in Kaidan’s hair.

 

_You left me, too, Shepard._

 

He wishes it were easier to say.

 

 

**6**

 

The Savior of the Citadel talks in his sleep. Mutters, really, but occasionally Kaidan can make out phrases, or words. Things like  _run. Wounded here. I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

 

Things like,  _Kaidan— don’t—_

 

“Don’t what,” Kaidan says blearily, raising his head from his pillow, propping himself up on one elbow. “John? You say something?”

 

“Lieutenant,” says Shepard, voice thick and half-delirious. He mumbles something else, incoherent.

 

Kaidan lies back down again, pulling Shepard against him and kissing the top of his head, rubbing his cheek over the soft-scratch buzz of his hair. He wonders what it would look like, grown out. He wonders what Shepard would look like, in the fading light of English Bay. “We’ll be in the clear soon,” he tells Shepard. “I’m getting you out of this in one piece, you believe me?”

 

Shepard makes a soft, sleepy sound. Turns over, nosing at Kaidan’s neck. “Kaid,” he says. “Kaidan?”

 

“Yeah, Shepard,” says Kaidan. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

 

**7**

 

The evac door hisses open.

 

Shepard’s mouth sets thin and grim. 

 

He doesn’t even have to say anything. Kaidan’s been through this already,he knows this routine, “Please,” he begs as Liara drags him onto the ship’s lowered platform, dizzy with blood loss and shock and the hopeless look in Shepard’s eyes. “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me behind—”

 

“I love you,” Shepard says, over the sound of gunfire, the Reaper beams splitting open the sky at his back.

 

And just like that. 

 

It’s closer to  _goodbye_  than they’ve ever gotten before.

 

 

**8**

 

He isn’t around when they pull Shepard out from the rubble. He isn’t there for Shepard’s second-first breath, either, or Shepard’s second-first flatline, or the flatline after that. He’s a million miles away, Far Rim territory, shot way past the rendezvous. Past anything.

 

As it turns out, there’s not much to do when you're MIA.

 

Kaidan spends his time sending out distress calls that no one hears. He makes a valiant attempt to fix their fried transmission lines, does some work on the stalled engines with Tali. He takes apart all of Shepard’s model ships, he puts them back together.

 

The Commander's things are exactly where he’d left them, the night before London. All his clothes, still in his dresser drawer. Spare boots, still peeking out from under the bed. Toothbrush in the bathroom. Chessboard on the table. And Kaidan stays there, too, sleeping on Shepard’s side and pretending that the sheets still smell like him, pretending that he’s just waiting for him to finish a report, and come to bed, because some days he’s not sure of anything but that,  _them,_ him and Shepard. The way they’d orbited each other, the way they’d come together.

 

For a matter of time, he was Shepard’s. For a matter of time, Shepard was his.

 

He takes those model ships apart, every last one of them.

 

And then he puts them all back together.

 

 

**9**

 

They bury EDI on a beautiful cliff-side of that unnamed jungle planet; afterward, Joker comes up to Shepard’s cabin, and together they drink themselves into a stupor. “I’ve lost her,” the pilot mumbles, holding the whiskey bottle close to his chest. He sounds stunned, like he’d expected anything but this. Like in the middle of galactic annihilation, EDI’s empty dead eyes were the only things he’d imagined to be impossible.

 

 _I know,_ Kaidan wants to say,  _I always thought I’d be the first to go, too._

 

“I can’t imagine—” Joker’s voice cracks. “For you to have that. And lose it twice. That must feel— like hell.”

 

And Kaidan wants to say  _you have no idea. You have no idea what it feels like,_ Kaidan wants to say,  _I hope you never will. I hope your ghosts die and stay dead. I hope they never come back and even if they do listen to me, don’t let them give you hope, or a fighting chance, they’ll only leave you on your own all over again._

 

 _Don’t fall in love with someone who thinks they can save you,_ he wants to say.  _Don’t even fall in love with someone who wants to try._

 

“Kaidan,”says Joker, like he knows what Kaidan is thinking, or like he doesn't know at all and is afraid to,and Kaidan takes the bottle, and lets it burn its way down into his chest, and lets it blur his mind into blackness.

 

In the morning he pukes until his head aches, and sleeps on the floor of Shepard's shower.

 

And they make it back to London in time for the body count to hit its peak, in time for the earth to swallow up Anderson’s corpse, in time for Kaidan to watch as Shepard’s chest rises and falls,past the hospital tubes and the medi-gel injections and vital monitors _—_

 

And to watch him flatline, for the third time.

 

 

**10**

 

 _Breathe,_  Shepard had said, years ago, holding Kaidan’s face in his hands.

 

“Breathe,” says Kaidan, trapped behind the cracked glass of the makeshift med-bay. Reminding himself. Reminding Shepard.  _Don’t you do this, don’t you dare do this to me._

 

_Breathe._

 

_That’s an order._

 

The monitor spikes, once, twice. Kaidan’s tears are hot against his cheeks.

 

_I’m here now and you’re not getting rid of me._

 

_That’s a promise._

 

“I'm still here,” says Kaidan. “I'm here, I'm right here.”

 

And somehow, Shepard’s heart remembers how to beat again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> here i am on [tumblr](http://bygoneboy.tumblr.com)


End file.
